Living in a white dominant context, we receive constant messages that we
are better and more important than people of color. These messages
operate on multiple levels and are conveyed in a range of ways. For
example: our centrality in history textbooks, historical representations
and perspectives; our centrality in media and advertising (for example,
a recent Vogue magazine cover boldly stated, “The World’s Next Top
Models” and every woman on the front cover was white); our teachers,
role-models, heroes and heroines; everyday discourse on “good”
neighborhoods and schools and who is in them; popular TV shows centered
around friendship circles that are all white; religious iconography that
depicts god, Adam and Eve, and other key figures as white, commentary on
new stories about how shocking any crime is that occurs in white
suburbs; and, the lack of a sense of loss about the absence of people of
color in most white people’s lives. While one may explicitly reject the
notion that one is inherently better than another, one cannot avoid
internalizing the message of white superiority, as it is ubiquitous in
mainstream culture.30